his hand had touched her elbow. They exchanged
words briefly, swiftly, and parted as abruptly as they
had met, the man continuing into the terminal as the
woman disappeared. Did the man glance over in his
direction? Converse watched closely; had that man
looked at him? It was impossible to tell; his head was
turning in all directions, looking at or for something.
Then, as if he had found it, the man hurried toward
a bank of airline counters. He approached the Japan
Air Lines desk, and taking out his wallet, he began
speaking to an Oriental clerk.
No surprises, no alarms. A harried traveler had
asked di
120 ROBERT LUDLUM
rections; the interferences were more imagined
than real. Yet even here his lawyer’s mentality
intervened. Interferences were real whether based
in reality or not. Oh, Christ! Leave it alonel
Concentratel
At the age of seventeen, Erich
Stoessel-Leifhelm had completed his studies at the
Eichstatt II Gymnasium, excelling both
academically and on the playing field, where he was
known as an aggressive competitor. It was a time of
universal financial chaos, the American stock
market crash of ’29 further aggravating the
desperate economy of the Weimar Republic, and
few but the most well-connected students went on
to universities. In a move he later described to
friends as one of youthful fury, Stoessel-Leifhelm
traveled to Munich to confront his father and de-
mand assistance. What he found was a shock, but
it turned out to be a profound opportunity,
strangely arrived at. The doctor’s staid, placid life
was in shambles. His marriage, from the beginning
unpleasant and humiliating, had caused him to
drink heavily with increasing frequency until the
inevitable errors of judgment occurred. He was
censured by the medical community (with a high
proportion of Jews therein), charged with
incompetence and barred from the Karlstor
Hospital. His practice was in ruins, his wife had
ordered him out of the house, an order expedited
by an old but still powerful father-in-law, also a
doctor and member of the hospital’s board of direc-
tors. When Stoessel-Leifhelm found his father, he
was living in a cheap apartment house in the poorer
section of the city picking up pfennigs by dispensing
prescriptions (drugs) and deutsche marks by per-
forming abortions.
In what apparently (again according to friends
from the time) was a watershed of pent-up
emotions, the elder LeifLelm embraced his
illegitimate son and told him the story of his
tortured life with a disagreeable wife and tyrannical
in-laws. It was the classic syndrome of an ambitious
man of minimal talents and maximum connections.
But withal, the doctor claimed he had never
abandoned his beloved mistress and their son. And
during this prolonged and
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 121
undoubtedly drunken confession, he revealed a
fact Stoessel-Leifhelm had never known. His
father’s wife was Jewish. It was all the teenager
had to hear.
The disfranchised boy became the father to the
ruined man.
There was an announcement in Danish over the
airport’s loudspeakers and Joel looked at his watch.
It came again, now in German. He listened intently
for the words, he could barely distinguish them, but
they were there. “HamburgKoln-Bonn.” It was the
first boarding call for the last flight of the night to
the capital of West Germany by way of Hamburg.
The flying time was less than two hours, the layover
in Hamburg justified for those executives who
wanted to be at their desks by the start of the
business day. Converse had checked his suitcase
through to Bonn, making a mental note as he did so
to replace the heavy black leather bag with a
carry-on. He was no expert in such matters, but
common sense told him that the delays required by
waiting for one’s luggage in the open for anyone to
see was no way to travel swiftly or to avoid eyes
that might be searching for him. He put Erich Leif-
helm’s dossier in his attache case, closed it and spun
the brass combination disks. He then got up from
the table, walked out of the cafe and across the
terminal toward the Lufthansa gate.
Sweat matted his hairline; the tattoo inside his
chest accelerated until it sounded like a hammering
fugue for kettledrums. He knew the man sitting next
to him, but from where or from what period in his
life he had no idea. The craggy, lined face, the deep
ridges that creased the suntanned flesh the intense
blue-grey eyes beneath the thick, wild brows and
brown hair streaked with white he knew him, but
no name came, no clue to the man’s identity.
Joel kept waiting for some sign of recognition
directed at him. None came, and involuntarily he
found himself looking at the man out of the comer
of his eye. The man did not respond; instead his
attention was on a bound sheaf of typewritten pages,
the type larger than the print nominally associated
with legal briefs or even summonses. Perhaps,
thought Converse, the man was half blind, wearing
contact lenses to conceal his infirmity. But was there
something else? Not an infirmity, but a connection
being concealed. Had he seen this man in Paris as
he had seen another wearing a light-brown
122 ROBERT LUDIUM
topcoat in a hotel basement corridor? Had this man
beside him also been at L’Etalon Blanc? Had he
been part of a stationary group of ex-soldiers in the
warriors’ playroom . . . in a corner perhaps, and
inconspicuous because of the numbers? Or at
Bertholdier’s table, his back to Joel, presumably
unseen by the American he was now following? Was
he following him at this moment? wondered
Converse, gripping his attache case. He turned his
head barely inches and studied his seatmate.
Suddenly the man looked up from the bound
typewritten pages and over at Joel. His eyes were
noncommittal, expressing neither curiosity nor
irritation.
“Sorry,” said Converse awkwardly.
“Sure, it’s okay . . . why not?” was the strange,
laconic reply, the accent American, the dialect
distinctly TexasWestern. The man returned to his
pages.
“Do we know each other?” asked Joel, unable to
back off from the question.
Again the man looked up. “Don’t think so,” he
said tersely, once more going back to his report, or
whatever it was.
Converse looked out the window, at the black
sky beyond, flashes of red light illuminating the
silver metal of the wing. Absently he tried to
calculate the digital degree heading of the aircraft
but his pilot’s mind would not function. He did
know the man, and the oddly phrased “Why not?”
served only to disturb him further. Was it a signal,
a warning? As his words to Jacques-Louis
Bertholdier had been a signal, a warning that the
general had better contact him, recognise him.
The voice of a Lufthansa stewardess interrupted
his thoughts. “Herr Dowling, it is a pleasure, indeed,
to have you on board.”
“Thank you, darlin’,” said the man, his lined face
creasing into a gentle grin. “You find me a little
bourbon over ice and I’ll return the compliment.”
“Certainly, sir. I’m sure you’ve been told so
often you must be tired of hearing it, but your
television show is enormously popular in Germany.”
“Thanks again, honey, but it’s not my show.
There are a lot of pretty little fillies runnin’ around
that screen.”
An actor. A goddamned actor! thought Joel. No
alarms, no surprises. Just intrusions, far more
imagined than real.
“You’re too modest, Herr Dowling. They’re all so
alike,
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 123
so disagreeable. But you are so kind, so manly . . . so
understanding. ‘
“Understandin’? Tell you somethin’. I saw an
episode in Cologne last week while on this picture
and I didn’t understand a word I was sayin’.”
The stewardess laughed. “Bourbon over ice, is
that correct, sir?’
“That’s correct, darlin’.”
The woman started down the first-class aisle
toward the galley as Converse continued to look at
the actor. Haltingly he spoke. “I am sorry. I should
have recognised you, of course.”
Dowling turned his suntanned head, his eyes
roaming Joel’s face, then dropping to the
hand-tooled leather attache case. He looked up with
an amused smile. “I could probably embarrass you if
I asked you where you knew me from. You don’t
look like a Santa Fe groupie.”
“A Santa Fe . . . ? Oh, sure, that’s the name of
the show.” And it was, reflected Converse. One of
those phenomena on television that by the sheer
force of extraordinary ratings and network profits
had been featured on the covers of Time and
Newsweek. He had never seen it
“And, naturally,” continued the actor, “you follow
the tribal rites and wrongs the dramatic
vicissitudes of the imperious Ratchet family, owners
of the biggest spread north of Santa Fe as well as the
historic Chimaya Flats, which they stole from the
impoverished Indians.”
“The who? What?”
Dowling’s leathery face again laminated itself into
a grin. “Only Pa Ratchet, the Indians’ friend, doesn’t
know about the last part, although he’s being blamed